Vancouver, Burnaby and Richmond consider Shark Fin soup ban

By DH Vancouver Staff, DH Vancouver StaffAug 15, 2012 8:54 am

The CBC is reporting that sale of shark fin may soon be banned in three metro Vancouver cities. Vancouver, Richmond and Burnaby are working together on a bylaw get rid of the Chinese delicacy from restaurant menus. Toronto, Calgary and other cities in southern Ontario have already banned the sale of shark fin soup. Nanaimo is the only city in B.C. to ban the sale of shark fin.

Shark Finning Process as per Wikipedia:

Much of the sharks’ fin trade uses fins cut from living sharks, called finning.[7] Because shark meat is worth much less, the now finless and often still-living sharks are thrown back into the sea to make room for more of the valuable fins.[7] In the ocean, the sharks either die from suffocation or are eaten because they are unable to move normally. The removal of ﬁns during processing on land is not considered shark ﬁnning.[8] Shark species that are commonly finned are sandbar, bull, hammerhead, blacktip, porbeagle, mako, thresher, and blue sharks and occasionally white sharks.[9]

As you can see the process of finning basically spells the end of a Shark’s life and this has animal activists in arms as shark populations are dropping at an alarming rate.

Shark fins are considered a status symbol in the Canadian Chinese community as restaurants are able to charge upwards to $100 for a bowl of shark fin soup

It’s important that if a ban is to take place that it happen across the board in all cities in Metro Vancouver and not just Vancouver, Richmond and Burnaby. If not banned throughout Metro Vancouver people will just go to the cities that still allow it.

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